Wasatch Mtn (13,555), La Junta Peak (13,472), "Jackass Point" (13,145), & Ballard Mtn (12,804) by Brian Schultz Monday July 13, 2015

Roundtrip mileage: 8.3 miles from Bridal Veil Falls road (10,380')

Elevation gain: 4,700'

Start to finish: 9 hours 15 minutes

Participants: Tim Briese & Brian Schultz

Tim and I arranged to stay in Ridgway for our upcoming three days of climbing. We've often stayed there in the past and we especially like the town's great restaurants. For today's itinerary, we got up extra early because the weather forecast was so poor, a 70% chance of storms/showers after noon. The downside of staying in Ridgway meant extra driving, and today we'd be driving to Telluride, but at 4:30 in the morning we weren't too worried about traffic on the highway or the main street in town.

In Telluride, we drove east through town and then up an easy 4x4 road to the power plant above Bridal Veil Falls. We parked near where a gate blocks vehicles from continuing further and began at 6:00 AM by climbing through a "hiker hole", as described by Mike Rodenak in his trip report. As we continued on the road/trail above Bridal Veil Falls into Bridal Veil Basin, abundant waterfalls were seen everywhere. That reason alone probably draws many people who aren't climbers to the scenic basin.

At a road junction higher up, we took the right fork toward La Junta (the left fork goes to Blue Lake). The road eventually led us at a spot where we needed to leave it and cross the creek to get into the basin. We took off boots and socks because the water was too deep and there weren't any rocks to hop on. The water was bone-chilling cold but at least the crossing was fast. We decided to bushwhack up the basin to the Wasatch/La Junta saddle instead of looking for an old road on the left side of the basin and this worked out well. As we gained elevation, we saw lots of snow remaining on the slopes directly below the Wasatch/La Junta saddle, so we aimed for a point on La Junta's ridge above the saddle to avoid the snow. We arrived on the ridge at 9:00.

It was just a slight drop to the saddle and interestingly, we were approached by a solo climber descending Wasatch. After visiting with Ken Kunkle, who had an extended list of peaks he was climbing today, we wished him well as he headed to La Junta. We headed up the steep talus ridge toward Wasatch, a grunt, but not too bad, and commented on how nice the weather was holding. We hoped it would last. The ridge's steepness relented above the talus and we arrived on Wasatch's summit at 9:53. Fifteen minutes later we departed and arrived back at the saddle at 10:40.

The ridge to La Junta was also steep but traveled well and we arrived on top at 11:18, a jaunt of less than forty minutes from the saddle. Tim's joints were aching and we considered calling it a day, but the distance to Jackass was minimal and the weather was still holding nicely so we continued on after another fifteen minute break. The descent was easy to the saddle and we got a good look at Silver Lake below. Our arrival time on Jackass was 12:08 and after yet another fifteen minutes, we headed over to unranked Ballard Mountain. Immediately after departing Jackass, we heard a distant rumble of thunder and scurried along to Ballard, which we reached at 12:50.

We snapped a few pictures of Telluride, seen way down below, and headed down Ballard's ridge to find the steep class 2+ gully that Mike Rodenak described. The gully would get us into Silver Lake Basin and finding this gully was important because the whole east side of the long ridge between La Junta and Ballard has continuous cliff bands. Thankfully we found it and while descending, Tim pointed over to a nearby gully that we'd briefly considered taking. It had cliffed out.

Once we reached Silver Lake Basin we side-hilled to the lake, arrived at 1:40, and rested briefly before heading down an excellent trail. This trail led to Bridal Veil Creek and once again we took off boots and waded across. We said hello to a number of day hikers walking the trail and continued to the power plant, where we arrived at 3:15. The parking area and the road were packed with vehicles, and on our drive out we stopped to take the requisite photo of Bridal Veil Falls. We were pretty happy that no storms materialized today but with the same forecast for tomorrow, we didn't think our luck would hold out and decided to switch peaks for a shorter day.

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